Last Stand (The Black Mage #4)(41)

I nodded absently as Paige marched in with a scowl.

“We leave at noon,” I called out after the raven-haired beauty. “You have two hours to gather your things!”

Priscilla didn’t bother to look back. “My servants already readied my things in the stables.”

She knew I would say yes.



*

The day we returned to the capital, all chaos broke loose. To say the king was unreceptive to Duke Cassius’s negotiations was an understatement.

Priscilla, true to her word—and Darren’s old promise—was on her way to the Crown’s Army camp. I couldn’t help but envy her freedom. She could blissfully go about her service while I was trapped searching for a solution to the Pythian ambassador’s riddle. Somehow, the highborn had ended up with the fate I wanted, and the lowborn had ended up in a web of courtly politics and deceit. If only she knew, I suspected she’d laugh in my face.

Now, instead of searching the palace for proof, I was searching for answers. It was easier to avoid suspicion. I wasn’t snooping around in places I wasn’t supposed to be, but it might as well have been the same. I had no mind for large-scale maneuvers.

Thanks to Cassius’s demands, all waking hours were spent in negotiations, not strategy, so I had little hope of coming across an answer in the war chambers. Asking for a solution straight out, how does one hold off the Crown’s Army, would draw too many questions. And the last thing I needed was for Mira to call me a rebel. Questions like that were hard to explain, no matter how creative the answer.

One of the things I could do, however, was take a trip to the city blacksmith with a long letter tucked into the extra padding of my boot.

Paige escorted me in the streets, of course, but she’d had enough dealings with Saba to wander the front of the shop, admiring the newest armor and weapons-in-progress, rather than study the wordless communication between her charge and the rebels’ capital spy.

I knew Nyx wouldn’t be pleased with the newest developments, but it was a far better outcome than Cassius’s flat-out refusal. The commander would keep King Horrace and the rebels apprised. We had hope, and she, more than anyone else, would be the most likely candidate to find a solution the ambassador would accept. Knights were strategists, and Nyx was elite. If she couldn’t find an answer… I didn’t want to think of the outcome.

Three weeks later, I received an early summons from the blacksmith: my new blade was ready. An envoy had ridden tirelessly in light of the commander’s response.

I emptied the sheath in the solitude of my own chamber. Nyx had given me five different solutions, each more complex than the last.

Warmth surged through my lungs. This was it. After one month of wracking my brain, scanning countless scrolls on war and walking the palace in a daze, Nyx had delivered something I could use. We would have the Pythians’ vote.

“This is certainly something,” the ambassador said later that night, “but it’s not enough.”

The commander of the second-largest regiment in Jerar had failed to produce an acceptable response.

“You still have a month,” he added. “That’s better than none.”

I took another trip to the blacksmith, and then entered the indoor training court alone. My entire vision was red.

Spraaaaat.

My third casting hit the barrier and a horrible screech followed, mimicking nails against glass, rough and unnatural. The entire thing began to quiver.

Streaks of white splintered across the barrier like a web.

It wasn’t enough.

I was tired of holding back.

I called on my magic again and again.

For a moment, I was a goddess, bursting with power, shattering the world around me with the flick of a hand. It felt good, I realized, to be free of those mortal troubles.

My palm itched and I ran the dagger along the length of it, watching as crimson drops pooled beneath my boots.

I didn’t need anything. I didn’t want for anything. I was overflowing with raw magic. It was spilling from me like a fountain; a hungry inferno was building inside my chest.

My seventh casting broke the glass. Shards of silver sung across the air.

My globe’s casting kept me safe, but I still heard the small tinkle as thousands of tiny daggers hit the surface only to fall harmlessly away.

I waited until the last of the slivers had fallen, and then I released my shield, watching as violet dissipated to black.

I was tired of being a pawn.

Behind me, the room suddenly burned orange. Someone had lit a sconce.

“Care if I join you?”

Darren’s boots crushed the glass as he left the stands to take a place on my right. His eyes were bloodshot like my own, his entire face drawn with lines of fatigue and his fists so strained they were white.

The Black Mage was dressed in formal attire hardly suitable for combat; I was wearing a dress.

The two of us took our places across from one another, the masters’ drills echoing like a relentless tide in the dark. Today wasn’t the time for a duel; today was time for something more.

I gave a small flick of my wrist and shadows grew, the flames behind us dimming to a small, crystalline blue. Then it was just our outline in the dark.

I drew my breath; Darren exhaled softly across the way.

And the drill began. A sharp whistle sounded as metal found its way to our hands, bringing a biting sting as blood dripped down below.